San Roque Regional Museum

In 1575 the Hospital del Santo Nombre de Jesus was founded by order of the village Mayor Don Diego Sarmiento de Figueroa, in what later became the Convento of San Roque. In 1634 Don Francisco Ruiz, Valladolid’s priest and Vicar bequeathed money to maintain four bed. By 1645 it already had 10 beds and was one of the best hospital in the province.

There is no trace left of it, but there are traces left from an Roque’s temple, for his construction took place much later.

In its courtyard today called “Parque Los Heroes”, lay buried Fernando Hipolito de Osorno and Pedro Gabriel Covarrubias, protagonists od the historical event know as “The Crime of the Mayors of Valladolid”; also, in this place were executed the leaders of the armed struggle of 1910.

The same building was chosen by Governor Jose Maria Iturralde Traconis to host the first electrical plant of the city. Since may 28, 1998 it is the San Roque Regional Museum.

In this museum the past and present of old Zaci and its surrounds are intertwined.

Just as the Mayan wise men demonstrated that there are at least two ways to count time, with a short and a long calendar, here history is told in different time: one belonging to the moon, presiding over the cuycle or corn, and others to the chornology of wars over territories, that man still fight these days.

Researching into historical sources, diverse testimonies have been found, some, eloquent, some silent. The friezes speak of kingdoms that lasted for katunes (7,200 days) but they don’t say how did the ancient civilizations died. The documents written during colonial times speak of times of richness, those written in Spanish of suffering of the macehuales (commoners) those written in Mayan.

The books and documents of European tradition currently in its possession and the Mayan legends and tales still told, contribute their own richness to build a present in which the heirs of these cultures and any other coming in to the region, can evolve peacefully.

It’s been over 450 years since the foundation of Valladolid by the Spanish it is fair to stop and think about the events that have occurred here so times does not destroy the memory, so the richness that has been made and is still made, the cultural heritage of eastern Yucatan, Valladolid speak of what we are.